Dona Isabel lifted her black eyes suddenly to Brace.
"You do not comprehend, then? Is it not, then, the custom of the Americans? Is it not, then, that there is no duenna in your country?"
"There are certainly no duennas in my country. But who has changed the custom here?"
"Is it not true that in your country any married woman shall duenna the young senorita?" continued Dona Isabel, without replying; "that any caballero and senorita shall see each other in the patio, and not under a balcony?—that they may speak with the lips, and not the fan?"
"Well—yes," said Brace.
"Then my brother has arranged it as so. He have much hear the Dona Barbara Brimmer when she make talk of these things frequently, and he is informed and impressed much. He will truly have that you will come of the corridor, and not the garden, for me, and that I shall have no duenna but the Dona Barbara. This does not make you happy, you American idiot boy!"
It did not. The thought of carrying on a flirtation under the fastidious Boston eye of Mrs. Brimmer, instead of under the discreet and mercenarily averted orbs of Dona Ursula, did not commend itself pleasantly to Brace.
"Oh, yes," he returned quickly. "We will go into the corridor, in the fashion of my country"—
"Yes," said Dona Isabel dubiously.
"AFTER we have walked in the garden in the fashion of YOURS. That's only fair, isn't it?"